While we’ve had confirmation that Fallout 76 will be available exclusively through the Bethesda.net Launcher, skipping Steam entirely, this may not be the case for all of Bethesda’s future titles.

Speaking at QuakeCon, Pete Hines, Bethesda’s senior VP of marketing & communication, explained that it is necessary to launch Fallout 76 through its own launcher in order to best provide the service for a live, ongoing game.

“We did not announce all future Bethesda games will not be on Steam,” said Hines to IGN. “That is not what we said. We said this game will be available exclusively on Bethesda.net.

“We haven’t decided on anything else, this is specific to Fallout 76 given the kind of game it is. It’s an online, ongoing game. We feel like the best way for us to provide the best experience and service to our customers is to be dealing with them directly, and not through someone else.”

Considering the number of ‘live’ games that currently operate through Steam just fine, this seems a flaky excuse at best. In particular when compared to the console versions of Fallout 76. These have to be available through Sony and Microsoft’s services and have notoriously tricky patch certification processes compared to Steam. If it works fine on console, it stands to reason it should work on PC too.

“There are some different things that have happened or have come up where having everyone work directly with you does make things a little easier in terms of talking to your player base, having them talk to you,” Hines continued to explain. “I am 100% sure I know whose fault it is and whose problem it is when you’re having an issue with the game: it’s ours.”

So to clarify, this is neither confirmation that Bethesda’s future games will launch on Steam, nor that they won’t. Putting on our tin foil hats at the moment, the entire future of Bethesda’s presence on Steam probably hinges on whether it can make Fallout 76 a success through its Bethesda.net Launcher. Should the game significantly underperform Bethesda’s expectations, in part due to being unavailable on Steam, then you can bet your bottom bottlecap they’ll be thinking about launching more titles through Steam.

To me, this reads like quite the ‘come and get us’ statement from Bethesda. Those folks who are vehemently opposed to buying Bethesda games outside of Steam now have the ammo to know their voices will be heard. Boycotting Bethesda’s platform would almost surely have an effect on the future platforms of its games. Make of that what you will.

For now, though, Fallout 76 is coming to Bethesda.net exclusively, and Hines was pretty coy as to where future titles like The Elder Scrolls VI, Rage 2 and Doom Eternal would be launching.

Do you believe Bethesda attains more creative control over its games by releasing via their own launcher? Are you discouraged from buying Fallout 76 purely to send a message to Bethesda? Let us know below!

Still yet another **ty launcher I have to install… I get that valve is taking their cut and understand that publishers don't want that, but for our convenience they should make it available on as many platforms as possible or at least on the most popular one.

With more money going into Bethesda’s pocket, it sounds as if that's a good thing for us. If one likes the publisher, one should support them on their own platform. Steam is great if you are just getting your foot in the door, but honestly, big publishers need their own structure so they can deliver more profit to themselves and, in turn, benefit the patron with more titles.

There are many a Bethesda game that I am quite a bid fan of, though I am no fan of Bethesda the company. Bethesda is probably one of the only big publishers that I would even halfway agree with you on. So far they haven't jumped into the loot box craze and their DLC is actual DLC and not cut content. They might not need it, but the extra dosh certainly can't hurt them.

That being said, it's going to take a lot more than the prospect of putting more money in Bethesda's pocket to convince me to use their store. Modding support is going to be the biggest, and hopefully the lack of too many stupid paid mods.

The problem is that their client and websites are not that good, they lack some very important features we're used to from Steam, the user reviews for example. The client is a click-to-play without much options, which I'm really not a fan of. With that being said I would support Bethesda on their client, they're probably my favorite game makers and Steam chopping 30% off the price tag doesn't sound fun at all.

Actually, I have feeling reason why they don't want Fallout 76 on Steam is bit more greedy. And that is because of sweet sweet microtransactions. Since Steam would take a cut, if you were purchasing stuff there. While on Bethesdas launcher they get 100%. And they need them, since they will need to maintain servers.

Since Fallout 76 still is bit like lighter version of MMORPG. Plus since other titles will largely be singleplayer, meaning no microtransactions, Bethesda has no issue to release them on Steam too, to maximize sale potential. But with microtransactions, it would be huge loss, lesson probably learned with ESO.

To me at least, it looks a little bit more like it reads, "Please please please buy Fallout 76… We promise we aren't going to abandon Steam entirely unless Fallout 76 does awesome. But seriously, please please please buy Fallout 76…" It really does sound exactly like me trying to explain to my GF why I can't stay at here place and I neeeeeeed to go home.

And here I was so excited for this and now I'm not even gonna bother with it. I don't want a different launcher for every single game I play. I already have steam, origin, and even Battlenet. I don't wish to have another. I won't be getting this game just because of it.

From a technical standpoint, unless they drastically change their games to be less open to mods I really don't see that happening. Most mods can be installed with out the Nexus Mods Manager and the manager isn't dependent on Steam. It's very possible they could do that though, and then simply sell mods as DLC to their game through their own store.

Steam modding is way better than nexus modding just because nexus modding is 90% kajit 8 nipples naked mod and 10% immersion (which isnt bad, the immersion part that is). However steam modding is much more game breaking and fun since well after 1000+ hours i like to stop immersing my self and start having some laughs.

Steam modding is trash and the installation system isn't good either. Nexus is the only way to go. They even gave money to modders, out of their own pocket, just because they felt like it. Can't think of any reason to support steam workshop on Bethesda games, except the simplicity of one-click install and then hope it won't ctd on launch lol